Crime Shows Ignore Real Crime

BigHollywood.breitbart.com ^ | March 24, 2009 | John Lott

[AreaMan]

Crime Shows Ignore Real Crime

Posted By John Lott On March 24, 2009 @ 6:27 am In Entertainment, Media Criticism | 36 Comments

The US Department of Justice released a very important report in January, but it got little attention. The report found that [1] 80 percent of crime in the US was gang related and that the vast majority of that was drug related.

[2]

Those of us who have worked with crime data have long understood this problem. For example, 50 percent of counties in the US have zero murders in any given year and another 25 percent have just one murder. [3] Over 70 percent of murders take place in just a little over 3 percent of the counties, but even that exaggerates the picture because anyone who has seen a picture of murders in a major city know how heavily concentrated they are in specific areas within the city.

I looked at I-Tunes descriptions for seasons [4] seven and [5] nine of “CSI” and seasons [6] four and [7] five of “CSI NY” as well as some episodes of “Law & Order,” but I can’t seem to find any episodes that deal with gangs. I found “Law & Order” shows that dealt with [8] gang rape, but that is obviously not the same as gang violence. During the first season there [9] is a murder by a doctor at a hospital, a white woman who guns down two blacks, [10] a gay man killed because he was gay, [11] a man who kills his lovers, and on and on during the first season.

[wastedyears]

They’ll never address the real problem.

And CSI: Miami is just a waste of time.

[Sans-Culotte]

The Closer on TNT is set in L.A. and frequently involves gangs. CSI Miami has had its share of gang shows as well. Most people watch such shows because of a "mystery" element. There is not much mystery or interest in gang members killing each other (and us) on a fictional crime show. That's why we watch the news or The First 48 on A&E.

[Obadiah]

I don’t watch any of these show but I also bet the crimes depicted in these shows are not acurately depicted by racial make up. Not to sound racist, but there is a limit as to how accurate Hollywood will allow itself to be before the heavy handed orthodoxy of politically correctness weighs in.

[Onerom99]

There was a Cold Case on TNT late last night that sorta dealt with gang violence. But in this case it was the African-Americans who were the victim of a Hispanic gang leader.

It’s like the third-rail of pop culture. Do something that shows black gang violence, and you’re going to be at the receiving end of an Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson shakedown.

[Mr. Silverback]

bump

[PLMerite]

Crime shows need sympathetic victims. Nobody cares about gangbangers capping each other.

[Pietro]

Its TV.

[AbeKrieger]

If you present crime the way it really is, with perps who look the way the perps really look, then you’re guilty of stereotypes and hate crimes.

[Wuli]

Even the “reality” cop shows, and even when they show “drug arrests” they are 99% of the time showing down-and-out people on the last legs of their addiction - not the drug gangs, not the big dealers, not the dealers’ retailers and certainly not the “drug lords”.

Most of the “criminals” on the “reality” cop shows are small-time, barely-making-it down-and-out losers who submitted to petty crime.

Even in the real-world, and even though they are a problem, and even though they well deserve their arrest, they do not make up the majority of major burglaries, assaults, murders or rapes. They (the usual suspects on reality cop TV shows) don’t have the intelligence, mis-guided intelligence, to make the “major crimes” roster. But, they do have the stupidity and mis-fortune to conduct themselves in a way that gets their arrests on the reality cops shows on TV. What do those “reality” shows show us about “major” crimes in the U.S.? Very little.

[AreaMan]

Its TV.

It is popular culture and it shapes opinion. Like it or not.

[itsLUCKY2B]

Liberal DemocRats ENABLE crime by DISARMING the law abiding and then taxing them to appease the ‘special victim’ classes.... if you were to subtract black crime from the US crime statistics, we’d be the most law-abiding nation on the planet by quite a margin. Even the Europeans would look bad in comparison.

[donna]

Watch these shows. They will scare you bad!

Gangland
History channel
http://www.history.com/minisites/gangland

Gang Nation
Investigation Discovery (I.D.) channel
http://investigation.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=141.15374.124893.35867.x

[peeps36]

At least 90% of Connecticut's prison population comes from its cities. The racial breakdown is close to 45% black, 45% hispanic and 10% white. The black inmates will be outnumbered by the Spanish/Mexican inmates very soon.

[clifcrds]

Although I don’t watch any network TV either, the related issue for me is how all those home security comercials never has a black person as the “perp” . . . it’s always a white male that is trying to break into the home. But like someone else posted earlier . . . “it is TV”.

[Goldsborough]

Watch these shows. They will scare you bad!

Gangland
History channel

Scare? I find them mostly amusing. They routinely interview "ex" bangers, who found themselves "betrayed" and snitching in retaliation, or who are either locked up or on parole, and with some dearly paid for perspective, offer up how stupid "thug life" is in reality.

The one scary thing I have seen in all of the episodes was about a random hit on a "neutral" teen in Los Angeles, who later died from being shot in the neck by some MS-13 wannabes.

Of course that type of crime is even scarier when one realizes that LA is a criminal safety zone due to the lack of legal concealed carry for the peons living there.

[montag813]

The report found that [1] 80 percent of crime in the US was gang related and that the vast majority of that was drug related.

"COPS" reflects this reality every single week.

[AreaMan]

Of course that type of crime is even scarier when one realizes that LA is a criminal safety zone due to the lack of legal concealed carry for the peons living there.

Ah yes only the anointed, Diane Feinstein, Shawn Penn, etc., may protect themselves. The rest of us can just shut up and pay our taxes.

[pepperdog]

Ditto “The First 48”.

[donna]

They look and act like the people moving into my Phoenix neighborhood. No one is impressed until it happens to them.